Last night in our men's group, we were talking about the different ways of "doing," and something revelatory (revolutionary) came out of it.

No task is worth achieving if it is done without self love.

There are all different kinds of reasons to "do" something: sense of obligationnecessitydesire to changedesire to achieveyou think you'll feel betterdesire to please...and so on.

Men have a unique relationship, in my opinion, with task completion. As the masculine is most often "provider," task completion can be so much about obligation that a sense of self or fulfillment in the task completion can get lost.

In this way, the relationship with taking action even in a positive direction, like if you want to change your life, can carry an implied burden. The distinction between obligation and something such as authentic desire is harder and harder to find.

Men become "do-ers" and wonder why they are unfulfilled. It's because your sense of what you actually desire has been abandoned, and habitually. And it's okay for you to carry desire. In fact, it's feeling to me like it's critical in order to keep this world turning that you act out of heart's desire and not blind obligation.

So, men, it's time you gave yourself permission to "do" out of love, and specifically, self love. No task completion without self love.

None.

If you abandon yourself, and the love for yourself, you can not expect any task completed to fill that hole. Period. You can not please another with emotional or physical labor and expect their reaction to fill that hole. You can not work enough to fill that hole.

Self love comes first, as priority. And from there, you will absolutely know what to do.

If you are a man that has perpetually sought to please others and have abandoned yourself, if you complete tasks out of obligation so much that you don't even know what you want anymore, and want to put yourself healthily at the core of your life, I have space for one-on-one support in my practice. Reach out.

I had the pleasure of going to hear Michael Meade speak a few nights ago when he visited Asheville, NC. Mr. Meade speaks on the topic of the human soul like no other, in my opinion, and if you haven’t listened to it, his weekly podcast called Living Myth is exceptional.

While sitting in the audience, listening to him talk about the need for us to be willing to acknowledge our emotions in order to access our soul, my curiosities wandered to how this impacts men and masculinity in the current cultural context.

The language of soul is not especially mainstream, though Meade and others - I’d count myself among them - do our best to bring this concept and language to the forefront in our work. Carl Jung was of course the pioneer of this inquiry of soul.

What the soul is is not easily defined. James Hillman said, “soul is a deliberately ambiguous concept.” It is a mysteries realm that, to me, involves the depth of a human, the psychological history and what is both conscious and unconscious. The soul is what makes us ourselves, what beckons us forward, what allows us to deeply feel and interact with life.

The intellect alone can’t touch the soul. Living solely in the body can’t touch the soul. The soul is accessed only through the conscious interaction of mind, body, emotions and spirit, as I see it. When we don’t integrate all of these aspects into our lives, as many people do not, there can be what is called “soul loss.”

The soul wants us to reach our potential - not the kind of potential we reach when we get an MBA, but the kind of potential to be who we really are as an integrated person. What do you care about? What wakes you up at night? What is the deeper calling that you’ve always had but didn’t follow? What kind of love do you really want to experience? These questions point to what the soul is really wanting from us. Too many people simply ignore that inner voice and persist forward in intellectual or career pursuits, hoping for fulfillment but likely not authentically finding it. Ignoring that voice can have significant effects.

Symptoms of soul loss include feeling lost, feeling disconnected, isolating yourself from others, feeling as though you don’t have a purpose on earth or wanting a purpose but unable to define it, you have difficulty identifying what is positive, you have low self esteem, you picked up defensive behaviors after a traumatic event, you check out with mind-numbing behaviors, you feel unworthy and unappreciated, and daily life is task-driven and mundane.

Is anyone else reading that list and also making the connection to common conditions in modern men? If you didn’t get that on the first take, go back and reread that last paragraph and ask yourself if these are also common difficulties of modern men. In no way am I making a case that this is a problem unique only to men, but I am saying that there are almost certainly correlations between soul loss and the pressures, problems, and stigmas associated with modern masculinity and men.

Perhaps it is a bold claim, but it’s one I’m willing to make. As a woman, I have been studying men through the soul lens for a long time. I am a deep soul searcher, and in my close relationships with men, both professional and personal, there inevitably comes a time when there is a question of soul. A deeper opportunity, if you will, to step into the more vulnerable sphere of the soul and to claim hidden aspects of self. And time and time again, I have witnessed men denying this invitation, even if they so desperately want what their soul is showing them. A man can want to be a more connected leader, for example, but when the opportunity is before him will require him to lead with greater vulnerability, does he take it?

When I see a man deny the invitation to go vulnerably in the direction of his own soul, I see it as having abandoned himself, and I feel absolutely heartbroken. Every man that I have ever seen falter, in my judgement, it was due to a denial of his own soul. And when this happens, we can not feel him - the authentic him. He goes on upholding his ideas of how he must behave in order to maintain his authority, for example, and personal connection is often lost.

On the other hand, when I see a man accept this invitation, that is where I actually have increased hope for humanity and masculinity. It is that important. This is the space in which we can connect, problem solve together, lead with compassion, and understand one another authentically.

To come to know the soul is a process that requires a continual acknowledgement of one’s own vulnerability, and of the shadow, or the unconscious. Men’s groups like The ManKind Project incorporate shadow work into their initiatory experiences for men which bring glimpses into the wide world of the unconscious, and this is so important in order that modern men have the opportunity to acknowledge the masks they’ve been wearing and that they engage in ongoing personal inquiry of this inner realm.

Accessing the soul requires an acknowledgement that imperfections exist, that all the bravado in the world will not, in the end, save you. The Hero’s Journey itself is an invitation into the soul, into the inner realm through facing challenge and overcoming obstacles. If the obstacles are always on the outside and a man learns to succeed and function in the world by conquering them externally, his Warrior essence is essentially false as he has not met the obstacles within. He will defeat under any challenge that tests his soul strength.

Meeting those obstacles internally is essential for our authentic existence - each of us individually but also collectively. I wholeheartedly believe this, and I would encourage all of us, regardless of gender, to get a little closer to the nudging, authentic voice of our soul today. When we do, we have access to our own inner truth, and we can lay down a lot of the facade that most people carry.

As a woman, I do not want a false bravado or mask presented to me when I talk with a man. I want to see his soul, and I want to know that he knows himself in that space. So many men are afraid of their own soul as they focus their attention outward to pleasing others. It is my goal to offer, both personally and professionally, opportunities for accessing the soul as a point of strength.

Michael Meade is a storyteller and collects ancient myths from around the world and then tells them while he also plays a drum. He told a story from China on the stage, and he asked us when he was finished, “What was the part that was the most significant to you?” He said that the part of the story that impacted us the most was the most important part to our own soul and how we live in the world.

The line that stood out to me, without question, was, “I will not let you abandon your own self.”

Dear men, that is how I feel about you. I will not let you, whenever possible, abandon your soul. The world needs you, and your soul-infused masculinity, now. I believe in you, but more importantly than what you can accomplish or prove, I believe in your soul.

Every man with an UNresolved mother wound wants to be held by the mother, and projects this onto women, often angry for what they can not give him.

Every man who has Resolved his mother wound knows what it truly is to be held by the Feminine, The Divine Mother, and realizes that this is what he truly yearned for all along.

The feminine, giving freely, as she was always meant to.

Every woman wants to hold her child.

Every woman not initiated into her femininity will perpetuate, willingly or scornfully, the attempted nurturing of adult boys into men, but she can not. This arrangement will hold both hostage. If you make snide comments about having to raise your husband, you are both in this pattern.

Every woman has the responsibility to reclaim her own true feminine such that she recognizes the honor of the Divine Mother within her, and then she can stand beside a man, she can watch him crumble and hold him nonetheless, she can invite him into the space of her nurturing when necessary, and this is a man who knows the unmistakable force of the feminine which he is blessed to reside beside.

I can take your relationship through a mother wound pattern and together we heal it. If you are in therapy talking about issues of responsibility and emotional compatibility, it may be time to say "fuck this" and get to the heart of the issue, which is likely an imbalance in the archetypal energies in the relationship. This can and must be healed for healthy actualization of your relationship potential.

This is the result of thousands of years of mistaken understanding of what femininity and masculinity truly are, their potential, and in turn, your potential.

In relationship, in Conscious Union, your partner and you have the unique potential to help one another rebalance polarities. It's an inside job, which is why we work with all three of you - each partner (2, & gender matters not here) and the relationship (1).

Embodied Breath Tribe

WHOA, THAT WAS CRAZY. Please read for important updates. Thank you. ❤️

Hello dear one, As we close out the week, the first quarter of 2019, and a mercury retrograde, it is clear to me that my life and how I run it is changing. For the better. It affects you if you want increased opportunities to access to my content, work, and what's next. #nextlevel

Back story....

Here's what I know: If you follow your Soul, you are in consistent initiation. We can call these "invitations to grow" in nice-speak. It can be like that or it can be an ass kicking.

I have a pact with my Soul that I honor it. I had no idea what this would truly mean in terms of some hard learning! I was always willing to do the deep thing. The speed at which I learned about what was unresolved in me in 2018 was like a firehose to the face.

2018 was a RIDE and my first year of full time entrepreneurialship outside of my education career. The launching of Embodied Breath was so sacred, and my soul lead me here, but now looking back, I see that I was in fear so much of that first year. It began with massive falling away of the old with some difficult lessons.

I was leaving behind a career that I'd built an incredible resume in. I was running a school with some of the most innovative approaches to Autism and Education integrated in a therapeutic model. I was giving that all up and had to consciously and consistently allow myself to own more and more parts of me that I had kept hidden and kept out of my work as an educator. For example, all reiki and Priestess craft! Integration of my whole self and my whole Soul mission was necessary. This was a wild and necessary process of honoring my whole Truth, as I understand it to this point.

Universe was like: Get ALL of you on board!!! My ego was like: But what does that safely look like??? (Because egos like safety.)

A good friend says, "There's no courage without fear." He also says, "Scared and Sacred are only two letters swapped." I take this to mean that right on the other side of our courage when we are scared is the Sacred. Our Sacred Mission.

And if you don't have fear, actually, you're either bullshitting yourself or you're hiding. Because authentic living is fucking scary.

You might have a heart's desire, and you might have a business idea, but if this is your true and actual calling and you dare to answer it, initiation is the name of the game. Because I can not offer what I'm meant to offer if I haven't touched it, or been willing to touch it. Courage is required.

It's like the Universe asking, "Are you sure? Let's see if you're for real."

On the last day of 2018, I spoke a truth that resulted in the end of a soul-level relationship that had required incredible risk in the first place, resulting in incredible trial. I don't really want to talk about it anymore because I don't want to stay in that energy anymore (choice), but this is to say, that's where I've been the last three months. Inside the examination of the Core Wound that that tapped.

Soul Searching. Diving those depths. Thankfully, I've authentically resurfaced, and not without some real self-examination, I promise you. (See blog for more examination of the depths if you want to take the time to read about my life. And bless you if you want to spend your time that way.)

I was pissed that I was learning about relationship and men one more time in the examination of the rubble. Sad for the loss and sad for how we all struggle collectively with what I was experiencing. I'm still standing before God and asking to integrate what has happened here, for the greater good. I was so mad at this man for doing what I judged as walking away and he said, "Use this, use any of this." I took that to mean, use it for my work. Honestly - I didn't want to have to! I was having a hissy fit in response to the non-preferred conditions. My resilient woman self was tired in deep ways. I didn't want to study men from the standpoint of disconnection anymore. But then I realized with a foot-stomping humility that I am also saying to God, "Use me." So integrate it I must. Right now, I have the willingness to examine it all through love and to move on allowing for integration of even all that is hard, but I don't have answers. And that's maybe all I need. I trust it's all happening according to a bigger plan.

An open and loving heart. Asking the deep questions. Willing to come back to the heart of the mystery.

I'm in.

And the way this all broke me open in everything it touched, combined with where I am on my Soul's journey, really has resulted in something quite beautiful.

A courageous heart, a boundaried life, and embodied Soulful woman. I'm smiling, I'm connecting, I'm shaking the fear and inviting the sensual back into my body. I am so grateful for where I am, the depth of the exploration I've touched, and the soulful encounters I've had on this leg of the journey. Life is rich. In the intimacy of the space we touch when we are willing to be real and vulnerable with one another, we touch what is most real. And, to be very clear, it's hard as fuck, this path. (Enter that is why I coach for a living - to offer this depth of support to YOU!)

In the rubble, we are given the opportunity to see ourselves laid bare and decide if we like ourselves there. We stop pretending. We sit with the ego. We have little else to prove. We have the choice to pretend or commit fully to an authentic life. I've chosen the latter.

This was life inside the uplevel. Inside the initiation.

And here are the changes on the other side:

❤️ I am diversifying my offerings to make some of them more affordable but also simultaneously strengthening the core of my work. (See below.)

❤️ I am sick of Facebook feeds, lost time & energy spent on distraction, and bullshit comments. I want real conversations. I want solution-finding. I want raw and real and gritty.

❤️ I want to pull together this tribe of people saying to me often: "I know the time is now to balance the feminine and masculine. How do we do it?"

❤️ I have SO much to say but I am not satisfied with doing that here anymore. I am NOT currently motivated to put that on FB because it gets lost, trolls are real energy sucks, and the engagement is inconsistent.

❤️ I value my abilities and content, and I am now simultaneously more generous and more willing to expect reciprocity for my contributions. This is self-worth. There is a distinct and important difference between generosity and giving oneself away energetically.

❤️ I want to hone the quality of what I contribute so that it is always worth your time.

❤️ I want you to benefit from my actual work more easily. #soulmission

❤️ I want to get gritty with real people who want to hold the inquiry about how to build the bridge between masculine & feminine. How to heal our bodies through our traumas and into the connection humans crave. How to heal gender-associated cultural ills. How to love ourselves in body & spirit.

Therefore! Structurally and energetically:

🌙 I am launching a membership program next week! This is where the BULK of my content will go. I am going to LOAD YOU UP with quality content, interviews, conversation starters about ALL THINGS Embodied Breath, bimonthly coaching calls, instructional videos, meditations, masculine/feminine, and more. It will be affordable, and you will be seriously compensated for your investment there, and you will also be contributing toward this woman's valuable work in the world. 😉 Thank you.

🌙 This is also where my energy will go first. No longer to FB feed. No longer writing for free for others' groups.

🌙 You need to be on my email list, too, for juicy stuff. Again, less on the FB feed. #tribe Go to my website and sign up.

🌙 More group options, because holy alchemy happens there. (Women's Truth group forming to begin 4/4.)

🌙 And... allowing myself to step more fully, with more dedication than ever, into my soul mission of serving relationships and conscious union. I needed to step away for a bit because projection is a real risk as humans and I was working out my shit! I needed to allow for integration, and now I can come back to this service, knowing ever-more deeply the necessity of this work, being divinely guided to do it. We need to be able to connect even through our fear and do the work of evolving into greater Union through conscious relating. Through evolutionary love. It's the only way.

Questions? Suggestions? Recommendations? Pop a comment below. Thank you for reading this far and thank you for supporting. Any comment below is welcome. If you want membership site info, comment "I'm In!" Below.

it’s good to remind ourselves of life purpose & our WHY

I believe in a world where men are kings and women queens. I believe in a world where we are not sacrificing our authentic nature to be in partnership. I believe in a world where the feminine and masculine are valued in all people. I believe in a world where men can stand in a healthy power. I believe in a world where women can flow in a healthy feminine. I believe in a world that recognizes the beauty in polarity but at the same time holds the tension and exists in Union. I believe in authentic connection that heals. I believe in bridging divides. I believe in alchemizing trauma. I believe in living as true to ourselves as possible, and writing the end of our own stories. I believe in a world where touch heals our traumatized bodies. I believe in recognizing the body as holy, the breath as holy. I believe in love relationships that heal and grow through divine alchemy. I believe in relationship upgrades on this planet. I believe in a world where we live with a courageous heart inside of each of us. I believe in inherent wholeness and our ability to regain it. I believe that humans can upgrade consciousness on the planet by creating divine union both within and among one another. I believe in a world that values edge walkers as leaders and rises above excuses that prevent change. I believe that we do not have to learn through loss and overcoming adversity, that we can also elect to learn through love, connection, and vulnerability. I believe in soul union. I believe in love. I believe in love. I believe in love. I believe in you.

This is an online group program exclusively for six couples who are consciously committed to their partnership but consistently loop in conversations that involve differences in personal truth. You want to move past these loops and form a more authentic connection based in the love you know is present.

It is so important that the union of two people honor the true Self and personal truth of each individual. Intense connections full of love can ignite beautifully and then backfire of personal truth is ignored in pursuit of the partnership. This compromise is made all of the time.

There is a way to honor what is true for each person without the relationship coming to a head. There is a way, and I will show it to you, to focus on and honor personal experience inside partnership, to mindfully attune to self first and then other, to communicate not based on even the most up to date emotional languaging but instead based in body awareness. When we apply mindful concepts such as noting, acceptance, compassion, and attunement to relationships, we can very easily discern common hangups, decrease tension in partnership, and truly come to accept and honor this person that we love for their own truth. It is incredibly freeing and connection-building at the same time.

Group space is limited to 6 couples.

Meeting times are Wednesdays 7-9pm EST in October 2019.

I will share skills and practices for consciously honoring truth, both personal and that of your partner, in live Zoom calls.

Must be willing to engage with personal practices daily for the duration of the course. This does not work if you only show up to the weekly Zoom call. You must practice what is provided to see meaningful change.

Both members must be in full agreement of participation when you commit.

There are no refunds.

Topics & Skills:

Differentiating personal truth from partner’s truth

Noticing what is and honoring it - mindfulness applications for relationships

Deep and effective body-based communication skills without needing to remember some formula for emotional languaging

Navigating disagreements in perception

Where do we expand, and where do we contract?

Reaction v Response - Conscious noticing of old fight/flight patterns

Shame, guilt, blame and other relationship killers - how to heal and transmute

The opportunity to enroll in 8 additional weeks of my customized conscious couples coaching at a rate of $577/week (Which essentially means you are getting the first month of my couples coaching for a massive discount!).

Access to meditations and instructional videos.

Agreements must be solidified by September 24, 2019. Investment for this deep-dive four week opportunity is $555 per couple. Space is limited to six couples and will be closed when filled. Contact me only when you and your partner are mutually very interested. We are creating a close community to navigate one of the most important topics within partnerships today. I honor this work and this process, and that is why I am asking for your full commitment to this process as well when you sign up.

We are here to take effective and conscious action so that we form deeper connections and move forward together. If you agree, if you feel a deep yes, I look forward to hearing from you.

It’s easy. We set up a weekly call, you get to check in, be honest, be vulnerable, ask for help, get inspiration, get reinforcement, and go back out in the world and kick ass. The differences in this plan and one on one support packages is that this one has less energetic healing intervention and more direct coaching, and no support between sessions. No consultation required - you can sign up on my products page. Ideal for leaders and change makers wanting some behind-the-scenes support, as well as ongoing support for established clients. $577/month

The world is changing. How we are relating is changing. Our love relationships are evolving.

You and your partner can learn to deepen your love connection and evolve your relationship through practices in attunement and co-regulation. Within this 20 page ebook, you will learn to co-regulate by using a combination of simple (yet profound) techniques & affiliated discussion questions. The activities in this book have had profound results for my clients!

There is no right or wrong in here! There are activities for connection and discussion! These exercises will meet each couple just where they are!

Co-regulation is how we attune to one another and ourselves in order to maintain a connected and peaceful situation. We need to be aware of our partner's condition, meanwhile internally regulating our own.

A lot of the time in unconscious partnership, there is trauma response to unmet expectations, worries, or other misfires. This relationship has a lot of blame and avoidance. You can take your relationship from unconscious to conscious - which is necessary for its survival - and you can begin right here with the activities within this ebook!

When used consistently, you will notice deeper connection, deeper satisfaction, clearer awareness, less attachment, more compassion, and more pure love within and between you.

Thank you for your interest in this ebook! I am excited to hear about how these tools serve your evolving relationship. Contact me at www.yourembodiedbreath.com for more personalized couples support.

One summer day, I gave my ten year old, who was going through a period of emotional conflict, a blank journal. I said, “Okay kid, now you are the object of your own investigation.” He’d recently been researching mythology.

Then I realized - it’s HIM he’s searching for. Isn’t that true for all of us?

He is now using these prompts, taped in the front of a blank sketch pad. He can choose which questions to reflect on, and he can write or draw his reflections.

I welcome you to use this with your children, at the dinner table conversations, or for you, big kid!

Noticing sensations as a basis for embodied mindfulness is essential! When we use this noticing of breath and body, and communicate from here, it reduces: the need to talk about emotions, the need to understand emotions, increases compassion in our relationships!

I love to encourage a daily ritual, and daily practices, in the four categories of Mental, Physical, Spiritual, and Emotional well being. When we want to change our lives, we need to practice living differently! Here is a simple PDF to prompt your consideration, “Am I practicing self care in these four categories? Where do I wish to put more energy?”

My clients and I craft a daily ritual together that they carry out during our time together. It is incredibly effective in claiming the life you desire and leaping into your next evolution of self!